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Robert Caulley was convicted of killing his parents. No physical evidence connects him to the crime, his attorney says.

New DNA found on gun -

The state crime lab has found DNA from an unknown person on the shotgun at the scene of the 1994 killings of Lois and Charles Caulley of Grove City.

Their son, Robert, who is serving 25 years to life for murder, hopes the DNA will support his claims of innocence and prompt officials to reopen the investigation.

Caulley said watching another Columbus man freed in August after DNA proved him innocent put his own "uphill battle" in perspective.

"It does give me hope, because you see things do change and get corrected," Caulley, 43, said in an interview yesterday at the North Central Correctional Institution.

Caulley's attorney said she would ask prosecutors to submit the partial DNA profile obtained from the shotgun into a national FBI database of more than 6 million criminals, in search of a match.

"To find an unknown profile, that's what we were hoping for," said Kim Rigby, an assistant state public defender.

But Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien said late yesterday that the state lab had already checked the DNA against the FBI database and didn't get a match.

"It came back blank," O'Brien said.

Failing a database match, Rigby said she would seek a court order to obtain a DNA sample from two people who were early suspects in the case.

"We tested what we could," O'Brien said of the evidence on file. "We have fulfilled our obligation under the statute and even beyond the statute. There is nothing to indicate that the jury's verdict was wrong after the DNA testing."

Despite a bloody crime scene and several rounds of DNA testing, Rigby points out that there is still no physical evidence connecting Caulley to the crime.

The Caulleys were beaten and stabbed to death in their home on Jan. 16, 1994. Robert Caulley called police and said he'd found their bodies.

Investigators initially thought the couple had interrupted a burglary, but several years later they homed in on Caulley. After several hours of interrogation, most of which wasn't recorded, they obtained a confession that Caulley has always maintained was coerced and manipulated.

Judges ruled that the interrogation was not improper, and Caulley was convicted by his own words.

DNA testing yielded other details.

Caulley, theorizing a hair found in his mother's hand might have come from her attacker, won a judge's approval to have it tested in 2004. But the vial that was supposed to hold the hair in the evidence box turned up empty.

The Dispatch highlighted Caulley's case in "Test of Convictions," a series of articles published in January. Afterward, the missing hair turned up when visiting Judge John Martin ordered testing of other evidence.

The hair could have come from either Lois or Robert Caulley, according to tests by Orchid Cellmark, a private lab in Dallas. DNA testing of hair is less precise than standard DNA testing, capturing only genetic details from the mother's side of the family. That means a mother and all of her children would have the same profile.

Before Caulley's trial, investigators said the hair didn't visually appear to be Robert Caulley's, based on an examination with a microscope. O'Brien repeated yesterday that investigators thought all along that the hair was from Caulley's mom.

"Evidently, this is hair from my mom," Caulley said.

Caulley confessed to beating his parents with a baseball bat, which never was recovered. His attorneys argued that they were killed during a botched burglary, probably by more than one person, beaten with guns found near the back door of the house.

The guns and other items from the house had appeared to have been piled near the door by burglars.

Earlier DNA tests of the other gun revealed a speck of blood from Caulley's dad on the underside of the trigger guard, which Rigby said supports the theory that they were beaten with the guns. Now, the unknown DNA on the second gun further bolsters that explanation, she said.